Chaos Group's V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp now in Open Beta

Chaos Group’s V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp now in Open Beta

Chaos Group has provided a massive update to V-Ray for Sketchup, announces free Open Beta program

The Chaos Group has announced this week a new V-Ray for Sketchup version 1.6 Open Beta. The company notes that architects, designers and visualization pros always want to do more–more iterations, more detail, more speed and better quality. Chaos Group says this major version update provides exactly this.

A Massive Upgrade

This massive upgrade to V-Ray for SketchUp includes a series of new feature introductions that enhance visualization workflow and render quality. These include V-Ray RT, V-Ray Dome Light and streamline scene complexity with V-Ray Proxy.

“With 16 new features designed and accounted for, V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp has become the most robust, and artist-friendly render application SketchUp users have ever seen,” said Corey Rubadue, Chaos Group product manager, V-Ray for SketchUp. “And it’s only going to get better in the future.”

01 – Chaos Group’s new V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp Open Beta is free to download now. The update includes many new excellent features.

Version 1.6 Open Beta Details

“V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp should be part of every designer’s digital toolset; it’s fast, simple, and seamlessly integrated, which allows you to explore ideas without leaving the V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp Open Beta application,” said Jorge Barrero, senior associate at Gensler. “The recent addition of V-Ray RT gives me instant feedback on my lighting, while V-Ray Dome Lights lets me push the quality of my renders to a whole new level. As a long time user, it’s pretty exciting.”

Rendering Engine Upgrades

V-Ray RT — this CPU-supported rendering engine streamlines scene setup and provides instant visual feedback directly in SketchUp for quicker design, material, and lighting decisions

Lights

Dome Lights — creates simple, artifact-free image-based lighting using importance sampling of HDR images. This technique greatly optimizes light tracing and GI precision
Lights as Components — V-Ray lights can now be part of a SketchUp component, making the process of changing the design and multiple lights at once much easier
Spherical Light — Creates spherically shaped area lights

Geometry

V-Ray Proxy — Manages scene memory and efficiently renders large amounts of geometry to increase detail and complexity in scenes. V-Ray Proxy objects are dynamically loaded and unloaded at render time, which saves vital RAM resources

Chaos Group is also releasing a set of materials that will help users get up-to-speed faster with the Open Beta. These include help docs, dedicated beta forum, tutorials and videos.

Pricing and Availability

This free open beta of V-Ray 1.6 for SketchUp is available for SketchUp 8 on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms–32-bit only. It can be downloaded right now by applying for the public beta program on Chaos Group’s website here.